IT'S DARK WHEN I push open the door to Mark's apartment. The idle notes of twilight are painted across the floor-to-ceiling windows, purples and indigos spilling into one another, offering little light. The rest of the room is in shadows, all shapes and figures that are all-too familiar after months of living here. My hand lifts to flick on the light switch, hovers for a moment, but then stops.

I don't mind the dark right now.

My feet lead me to the guest bedroom where I quickly drop my purse off next to my stuffed-to-the-brim and poorly organised luggage, then find myself drawn back to the living room.

As I collapse onto the couch, a sense of uncanny overwhelms me. The standard fixtures are all in place- the couch, the counters, the lamps and whatnot, but different. The human touches have all been stolen. The TV is gone, the framed photo of Mark and Nat, the soft blanket I had thrown over the couch. It's strikingly empty.

My mind wanders to the almost clinical atmosphere that had also greeted me at Noel's apartment, but I don't linger so long to figure out what that means.

There's still an almost constant stinging in the back of my eyes, which only seems to grow now that I'm no longer in anyone's line of sight. I try to grit my teeth, look up to the ceiling, mash my lips together to keep myself dry, but there's still one betraying tear that spills over. It rolls down my cheek, and with a sniff, I wipe it away with my sleeve.

There are clearly more important things I have to be upset about- my looming student debt, barely escaping homelessness, the situation in Aleppo. The options are endless. Noel should've been the last thing on my mind.

Nobody.

It isn't fair that the word had left his mouth, a manifestation of all my fears smashed and pulverized into that six letter word. That a five-minute confrontation could reduce me to tears when I hadn't cried over anybody, let alone a man in years.

The most I felt after ending it with Chad was a little annoyed because I'd left my favourite bra there.

And Vika Phan doesn't cry, I tell myself, fighting back another onslaught of prickles behind my eyelashes. Especially not sober, which I'm reminded that I painfully am, and lean back into the couch cushions.

My attention is caught by my phone next to me, Nat's name lighting up the darkness. A part of me knows that if I answer she'll be over in less than twenty minutes, holding a tub of ice cream and a bag of flamin' hot Cheetos, arms open and ready for me to collapse into, but I still don't answer. I heave a tired sigh, instead, watching as it goes dark again.

If it's five minutes or forty-five, I'm not sure, but I sit there staring into nothing, somehow both disturbed and comforted by the absolute lack of anything in sight. My mind wanders from high school to Noel's bed to the still unfinished manuscript that's been lingering on my laptop for years too long. Trying to figure out when the inherent compass of life that everyone else seems to be built with ended up broken inside of me. Why everyone's north star seemed to be like a magnet pulling them forward and I was a much less successful groundhog day horror.

It's movement that drags me from my reverie, a flash of colour that punches my heart into my throat. With my breath already stolen, I realise it's Cleo slowly meandering her way towards me, green eyes shimmering in the dark.

I watch, mildly curious, expecting her to walk her way towards and then around me like she usually does, maintaining that ever-cautious five foot distance.

But she doesn't.

I make a half-human noise as she hops up next to me on the couch, looking as guarded as a cat can be. I blink to make sure that my eyes aren't playing tricks on me, even more when she waltzes straight onto my lap, all beauty and grace, curling up as if I was more of a satin pillow than a human being.

There's a beat of complete and total silence. I'm frozen, eyes-wide, waiting for Cleo to seize the opportunity and tear my face off from close range, but she doesn't. She sits, comfortable, quiet. After my lungs begin to burn, I take a breath.

When I get used to the new weight on my lap, I relax. I don't pet her, trying to keep my eyes inside of my skull where they belong, thank you very much, but I enjoy the warmth of her body against my thighs. My disastrous lack of sideburns tells me I shouldn't read too much into it, but I can't pull back the fresh wave of tears that come with the heat of another living creature next to me.

"Thank you, Cleopatra," I murmur, sniffing. "I know that technically he's your owner and if he walked in right now, you'd bound into his arms but I kind of feel you're taking my side right now and that's basically one of the best things that has happened to me in for the past week."

Cleo, like usual, doesn't say anything. Nevertheless, it's still comforting. So much so that when she finally stretches and sits up, hopping back onto the ground and stealing the warmth away with her, it takes all my willpower not to grab and drag her back into my arms.

"You can run away but you can't run away from the fact that we had a moment, Cleo!" I call after her retreating figure, not that she cares. "You can't run from the truth!"

I try not to be offended that the fish is better company than I am, and then I remember- the fish. The guest bedroom door left slightly ajar from earlier springs up to memory.

"Don't touch the fish!" I all but shriek as I immediately jump to my feet and charge after her, eyes wide. "I swear if you buttered me up to eat my friend, Cleo!"

I slam my palm against the door frame to steady myself, chest heaving, breath short. Cleo's eyes snap to mine, absent from both innocence or guilt. She's delicately poised on my desk, ears perked up and facing the fish bowl that I've left on the dresser- the highest point in the room.

I narrow my eyes. "Cleo, you cannot eat the fish."

All sanity aside, I swear she narrows her eyes in a challenge.

"Shoo, shoo," I say while waving her off my desk, and she obliges, but not without glaring green-eyed daggers in my direction. "This changes nothing!"

When her black and tan striped tail disappears around the corner, I'm left standing in the room I've called home for the past couple of months. All my belongings have been shoved and zipped away, my entire life in two suitcases and a backpack, excluding my laptop, which sits on my desk where Cleo had been.

I try not to think about the Cavalli jeans that are stowed away somewhere, too soft for me to throw away on principle.

Crinkling my nose, I sit down on the desk chair I'd been avoiding for weeks, fingers brushing over the cool aluminium of my laptop. Nobody seems to be synonymous with another seven lettered bane of my existence- failure. And as I lift the laptop open and boot it up, welcomed to a word document that had been first created years ago, all thirteen of them weigh heavier in the pit of my stomach.

"All right, Fish, you watch me," I say to the splash of indigo swimming around on my dresser, stretching my back and cracking my knuckles in determination. "You might need money to do a lot of things in this world, but writing is free, and I can write. So fuck them."

When I look to the fish, there's an unfathomable sense of encouragement in the gentle way it floats.

An hour later, I want to let Cleo back in for an early dinner as revenge for giving me false hope.

"How could you do this to me?" I groan, my face buried into my hands, barely restraining myself from banging my head against the keyboard and making more and probably better progress than I've had since sitting down. "I trusted you!"

When I peek through my fingers to the screen where a blinking line cursor taunts me, barely having moved more than half a page from where it started, there's a new sense of dread to make good company with the lingering kind that's been in the pit of my stomach for the past couple of days.

"Can't you work with me, Fish? Give me something?" I ask, looking over to it. "You're being awfully selfish over there, honestly."

The fish, like all other creatures in the apartment, is silent. I shoot it a dry look.

"Can't write, apparently," I muse with a heavy, defeated sigh. "Can't write, can't be a successful adult, and can barely take care of a fucking fish. All right. Cool. Are take-backsies allowed, or did I miss my chance for that?"

There are zero answers given as Fish swims around in its little tank, the sprawling fins letting the water take it where it will. I roll my eyes. And everyone called me a freeloader.

"How do I even take care of a fish?" I ask myself out loud, for no other reason than it makes me feel a little less alone. And then, while I'm typing it in in the search bar, "How to take care of Betta fish?"

My inherent Google-savvy that's built into my millennial heart has me browsing a few wikiHow pages and as I take periodic glances over at Fish, my brows furrow, seriously disturbed. The more I scroll and scan, the more I wonder if maybe fish hell is really where I was going to end up.

"Oh my god, are you okay in there? Here I am, crying over some dude and you're basically dying in your own crap. Shit, Fish, I'm so sorry."

My eyes sweep over things like filter, thermostat and 5 gallon tank written across my screen, a complete juxtaposition to the small, round bowl that Fish is swimming in. Fish doesn't answer, but inside I assume it's crying.

At least that made the two of us. Misery loves company, and all that.

Clearing my throat and squaring my shoulder, I stand to my feet and point a sharp finger in Fish's direction. "Listen here, Fish. I'm going to be straight up with you."

Fish continues swimming, and I assume appreciates my candor.

"All of these things seem really expensive, and I am almost very incredibly broke, but you are my responsibility now and I can do this. I can keep you alive, and I'm going to get you some real ass plants because you are my friend and my friends deserve the best," I promise, stepping around my bed and reaching to swipe up my purse.

Cleo has returned and is poised in the doorway watching me. There's an unnatural sense of camaraderie for someone who is basically talking to themselves.

"When I get back with your new home, I'm going to finish writing that goddamn book, and I'm gonna send out some goddamn query letter to agents, because we are somebodies and we deserve it. Right Fish?"

When I pause for a response, I wait two seconds before immediately escaping the room because maybe getting outside and into the world of human interaction will be helpful in not sounding like a crazy person.

Still, a sense of renewal propels my steps forward, out from the elevator, through the lobby and onto the sidewalk. So much so, that when I see a familiar dark head of hair rounding the corner in front of me, an electric charge sparks down my spine. The reasonable part of me is reassuring that brown hair the chances of it being actually him are slim to none, and probably only an overactive figment of my imagination, but there's another part that whispers if I run fast enough I could probably catch up to him.

Just to check. Just to see. Just for peace of mind.

And I take a step forward, hand gripped tightly to my purse, heart dropped all the way down to the base of my spine and throbbing two beats too quick.

And then I take a step back, thinking of poor little Fish wasting away in its little tank, and turn, telling myself that Fish, and I, deserve better.